An interesting mixture. He could not bring himself to ditch the rhetoric of an (urgent) all-embracing legally-binding climate change UN agreement, and yet when pushed he conceded – de facto - much of the Hartwell thinking: small incremental initial steps, clean energy innovation, tackling issues on their own terms rather than as ones stitched into the fabric of climate change, etc. It’s as if he – and others – are now trying to speak the new language, but deeply frightened to let go of the perceived safety of an outdated orthodoxy.

The US based Breakthrough Institute has just set up this blog for Europe. The site will be staffed by Jerome Roos, a Breakthrough Fellow from the Netherlands. He has the first installment of a three part series on the failure of EU efforts to address climate change posted -- "Cancun Can't."

Here is a teaser:

Europeans hang on to the dead treaty process because letting go requires acknowledging an uncomfortable reality. Europe has not reduced its emissions and is in no position to lecture the world. Fed up, the world's largest developing powers -- China, India, Brazil, and South Africa -- broke away from Europe in Copenhagen. That the U.S., not Europe, mediated the divide, stung all the more.

This should provide some interesting mixing of perspectives, across the Atlantic!

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Climate is both politics and science. These fields are never independent; instead, they are connected in multiple and ever new ways. The recent elections in the US changed majorities, with effects on future climate politics, of course. In the The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert writes an alarming comment. The new chairman of the Oversight Committee, Darrell Issa, wants to investigate climategate and climate scientists once again. "Not content merely to ignore the science, they have decided to go after the scientists", writes Kolbert.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Just found this app for your iphone. A selected (?) list of the hacked emails, with a search function. I have no idea who is behind this idea and what the intentions are.
In the description it says:
"The scientists who wrote the emails have been officially cleared of wrongdoing, by several inquiries in both the USA and Great Britain, so the emails, and some of the fascinating quotes contained therein, should not be interpreted as evidence of wrongdoing. For more information about the official reviews and their findings, please visit:http://www.realclimate.org ."

Saturday, November 13, 2010

I have finished reading Roger Pielke's The Climate Fix and last Thursday I listened to a talk by Nico Stehr, who basically presented the main thesis in the Hartwell paper. Both, Roger's book and the Hartwell paper, make an interesting reading, and have, with justice, been positively reviewed in many other quarters. Here I would like to comment on one point of the Hartwell scheme that seems to require some elaboration. Some of the questions posed to Nico Stehr after his talk also raised doubts about the feasibility of 'forced innovation'.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Judith Curry has an interesting blogpost under the heading 'Reversing the direction of the positive feedback loop'. She analyses the dynamics of the climate issue as driven by a policy process with the self-interest of the IPCC at its heart.She writes:

Monday, November 1, 2010

In a recent posting Rob Maris conducted a survey to determine what makes a climate change skeptic. It received both criticism and praise. Mention was made that skepticism might reside in the science-policy interface. I have chosen not to enter into the fray of policy as I believe science that shares a bed with politics has a tendency to lose its objectivity and, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, results in dogma. Consequently this discussion is limited to climate change skepticism in climate change science. Here I attempt, first, to forward the definition of climate change skeptic in climate change science. After all, outside of our area of expertise we are limited to expressing opinion, be that good or bad, it is the reality. I then present a few empirical examples that add to the confusion.

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